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October 8, 2014 BP UnfilteredThe Cardinals' Flickering Magic LanternDear Mr. Rosenthal, I'm a Sabermetrician. And a doctor. Perhaps I might be able to answer your recent question about why it is that the Cardinals seem to have all the luck in the playoffs and everyone's favorite playoff punchline, the A's, apparently need a better laxative to cure their playoff ills.
Let's talk about the Halo Effect. No, it has nothing to do with shoot-em-up video games or with the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim. To quote you:
The Cardinals have won 63 postseason games since 2000, most in the majors. And when they prevailed in four games over the Los Angeles Dollars in the Division Series, concluding with a 3-2 victory Tuesday night, only the foolish among us — OK, me — should have been surprised..
Three late-inning breakthroughs. Two comeback victories over [Dodgers] left-hander Clayton Kershaw. Left-handed hitters crushing left-handed pitching. The improbable turning inevitable, again and again.
The Cardinals lose Albert Pujols. Nothing changes. They lose Tony La Russa. Nothing changes. They lose Chris Carpenter. Nothing changes.
In fairness, the Cardinals have also lost 53 playoff games since 2000, second only to the Yankees (54) in that time span. It's a very good record and somewhere at Busch Stadium, there are two World Series trophies from those years. Why do the Cardinals seem to have all the luck? (And since you politely requested that I not use the words "small sample size" or "randomness" or "baseball is crazy," I'll refrain.)
Let's create an alternate universe. We both know full well that a baseball game can turn on one play that's decided by a couple of inches, which can be provided by a convenient gust of wind or a little pebble on the infield that causes a weird hop. Or, y'know, Nelson Cruz's glove. Let's say that a few of those had gone against the Cardinals and that those World Series wins never happened. Now let's review a couple of the low points in recent Cardinals playoff history:
What a snakebit team! They fail time after time in the clutch. No wonder they've never won the World Series!
Would you like me to keep going?
The Cardinals did win those World Series, and nothing can take that away from them. They have had a wonderful run of success over the past decade. They have run a very good organization that has had good luck in the draft. They've done fantastic things in player development. The fact that they even got to the playoffs speaks volumes about the job that they've done.
The Cardinals have also pulled off some fantastic comeback victories and come through in the clutch plenty of times over the past few years. I'll even buy that some of that magic is real (just that it's not actually magic) and that clutch hitting, in the sense that a pressure situation can change a hitter's approach and sometimes for the better, actually exists.
But let's not fall victim to the Halo Effect and overlook the times that the Cardinals fell short. It's easy when you already know the outcome of what happened to look back and see the past in a golden glow. If the Cardinals really do have a magic lantern that will inevitably guide them through the playoff storm with the shining light of righteousness, why does that lantern seem to flicker so much?
peace, love, happiness, banana pudding,
Russell A. Carleton is an author of Baseball Prospectus. Follow @pizzacutter4
4 comments have been left for this article.
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So true! Thank you, Russell. People forget that the Cardinals got knocked out of the playoffs by a team with a worse regular-season record in 2000, 2001, 2002, 2004, and 2005. There's really only one reason the Cardinals seem like a blessed franchise imbued with magical postseason pixie dust: because they are a generally well-run franchise that's had several bites at the apple. That's it.
"Luck is the residue of design." - Branch Rickey, GM of the St. Louis Cardinals, 1919-1942.